Monday, June 24, 2013

Part 116 - The Marlboro Man

There
was a shuttle bus that connected Dunsmuir with Shasta City and would depart in
one hour. Searching around for a place to wait, I found a picnic table
next to the police station, and discovered that it had outside electrical
outlets; while I waited, I charged my cell phone and finished off a box of
cookies while sitting at the table.

Dunsmuir
was a quaint little city, neat and orderly without graffiti marring the
exterior of the buildings. It had no streetlights or parking meters and
had retained the ambience of a city from the 1920s to 1930s. It owed its
life to the coming of the railroads. In 1887, the Union Pacific line was
completed through the steep Sacramento River Canyon, and a roundhouse and
switching yard were built south of town, on Soda Creek Flats, to service steam
engines and add additional engines to help push the trains over the steep
grades north of town. Dunsmuir, originally dubbed Poverty Flats or
Pusher, was also noted for its world-class, blue-ribbon fishing in the Sacramento
River. [1]

The
shuttle arrived on time and I climbed aboard, placing my pack in the seat next
to me. The fare was two dollars and I was the only passenger aboard. The
driver, who looked a bit like Santa Claus, was friendly and I told him I would
like to be let off at the Travel Inn in Shasta. He said he knew exactly
where it was and would do as I requested; the twelve-mile ride to Shasta passed
quickly, and within twenty minutes I was standing in front of the Travel Inn in
downtown Shasta, my home for the night.

The motel
had a 1950s look to it - small courtyard ringed with small apartment-sized
units with outside wall-mounted air conditioners. The front rental unit
has been converted to an office and living unit for the manager and his family,
which in this case consisted only of a husband and wife. The motel may be
from the fifties, but the nightly rate was more modern.

The rate for a
nonsmoking room, plus tax, was eighty-two dollars, which for my frugal mind-set
that is content to sleep outside in the woods, was excessive. The manager
was from India, as are many motel managers I have met in my travels, even as
far back as the 1980s when I biked across America. I asked the manager
why he thought members of his ethnicity tended to gravitate towards the hospitality
industry. His English was good, but I couldn’t get a straight answer from
him, so I was still left to wonder.

The
manager escorted me to my room and opened it for me to validate his claim that
it was a nonsmoking room. I thanked him, walked into the room, and dumped
my pack and trekking poles on the floor. As I stood there in the middle
of the tiny room and surveyed my surroundings, I contemplated the term
"nonsmoking," and couldn’t help but marvel at what a significant
advancement society has made in relation to this fundamental quality of life.

Momentarily,
into my mind flooded memories of riding in Greyhound buses when smoking was
permitted, of flying in airplanes when smoking was permitted, and attending
outfitter meetings in Moab, Utah, and Salmon, Idaho, when smokers, without even
a hint of consideration for others, would light up and turn the room blue with
cigarette smoke, leaving the nonsmokers gasping for fresh air and rushing to
open every available window. I am so grateful we’ve moved beyond those
archaic times.

Marlboro Country it’s not

As a
river outfitter in the 1970s through the 1990s, Moab, Utah, was my home base,
which was also the location of Canyonlands National Park, Arches National Park,
and the Colorado River. The
scenery around Moab is world-class and is the primary attraction for visitors
from all over the world, as well as the film industry.

In every respect, Moab, and its
red-rock country symbolizes and embodies the idealism of ruggedness and imagery
of the American Old West. And
it was for these attributes that Philip Morris, the makers of Marlboro
cigarettes, descended upon Moab, beginning in the 1960s, to use the red rocks
of Canyon Country as a backdrop for their new ad campaign.

The idea
behind their brilliant marketing campaign was to bring groups of young people
to Moab, split them into teams and have them compete in adventure activities
such as four-wheeling, canyoneering, rafting the Colorado River, and racing
dirt bikes across the desert sands. All the while, the cameras were rolling,
and the end product was a fast-paced, exciting adventurous movie clip that was
played again and again in theaters in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, where
restrictions on cigarette advertising were virtually nonexistent, and always
with the subtle and underlying theme; if you smoke Marlboro cigarettes, you too
can be a cowboy and live the Old West adventure.